Adam Powell, today’s guest blogger, was a co-founder of the Forum for Understanding Minor Attraction (FUMA), which engaged with mental health support services in the UK with a view to improving what was on offer to those of us with “an emotional and erotic attraction to children or adolescents below the age of consent”. FUMA pursued this objective from its founding in 2012 to the abandonment of this aim in 2017, largely over frustrations that former maths teacher Adam writes about here. He has since emigrated to the Netherlands.
… POLITICALLY, WE ARE FAILING TO SAVE OURSELVES
I was acquainted with the UK branch of Stop it Now! (SIN) on and off from 2007 to 2015.
SIN began in the US and was founded by Frances Henry, who has said her father sexually assaulted her for four years, from age 12-16. She took it upon herself to visit men in prisons serving sentences for actual or perceived child sexual abuse. She went in to ask them one question: would they respond to therapy if it were offered? The overwhelming majority said they would. This is what she wanted to hear. It is also what I would expect them to say, having serious personal problems and wanting to get something off their chest; but I do not think that is what Henry had in mind.
SIN has spread its influence across the world to other countries including the UK and the Netherlands. The UK branch denies that minor attracted people exist. According to them, nobody is a paedophile. It is a “media stereotype”. They find the very idea that any adult person could be sexually attracted to a child preposterous in spite of many people telling them that this is the case. They believe a child has nothing to offer an adult. They have said on their website that they agree with Freud’s assertion that a child is a sexual being like anyone else, which would appear to contradict their salient message. It causes them consternation that an adult would have a social interest in children; when this is the case they tend to be judgmental and imagine there is something seriously wrong with that individual even if involves nothing sexual. They tend to see their own beliefs as axiomatic; somehow their own thinking is just “common sense”. It needs no explanation; anyone taking a contrary view must be either stupid or rebellious.
I think we need to look carefully at the context within which the UK branch operates, or did until at least 2015. There are significant differences between the UK and NL branches. SIN UK is a charity that works closely with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF) which has similar goals. They are being run by much the same people but for accounting purposes have to be treated separately. SIN struggles to raise money from members of the general public because MAPs do not attract much sympathy. Their staff have experienced a lot of flak too. They survive on government grants. Although strictly speaking a charity, SIN UK is a quasi non-governmental organisation. The government is outsourcing its duty of care for minor attracted persons to a charity, when I think the National Health Service should show greater responsibility. Neither SIN or LFF can say anything other than what the government wants to hear, so it is inevitably an abusive organisation reflecting the abusive attitudes of the government and of the wider public. If the staff at SIN were to move to the Netherlands and experience a different ethos they might learn a more compassionate response.
Baroness Lucy Faithfull was a Conservative member of the House of Lords, in which capacity she campaigned for MAPs to receive treatment aimed at a “cure”. This was absurd. Baroness Faithfull should have known that various attempts to “cure” gays had little success and caused enormous psychological damage to those involved. By repeating a broadly similar behaviourist approach but without electric shocks (which were outlawed in the UK in the 1980s) Baroness Faithfull should have been able to foresee that any attempts to “help” people who said that they were minor attracted was likely to have similarly disastrous results.
I think that the Baroness was just as naive as Frances Henry in believing that whatever your problem is, the answer somehow lies in counselling. This is the context within which SIN and child protection “professionals” work. They seem to believe that their moral judgement is enough for them to provide therapeutic services for others. I appreciate that moral judgement is necessary for us to make sense of our lives and to prevent us from harming ourselves and others but moral judgement is always made on the basis of inadequate knowledge.
Here lies the problem with SIN and their fellow travellers. They seldom allow themselves the luxury of accepting that they are frequently wrong, misled and shallow. Things that they see as axiomatic such as “adults are more powerful than children” are not always true. Sometimes a child is more powerful than an adult, within their own orbit. SIN UK is part of a wider movement that wants to see the complex questions about nature and the universe reduced to a few simple axioms, because they imagine this will make the world a happier place. They cannot have what they want so they tend to direct their anger at their clients.
They also have to work closely with the police, probation, child protection agencies, survivors’ groups, the media and mental health professionals, so they have to sing the tune these people want to hear even when it is contradictory. I think people have a better understanding now of the limitations of psychology (which were shown by John De Cecco in an interview with Joseph Geraci in Paidika (Vol. 1 No.3, Winter 1988), in which he explained that psychology has sold its soul to money. The psychological opinions one gets depend on how much you are willing to pay for them, making the psychological community look very corrupt. One also hears stories about intimidation in British universities of academics who do not say what the government or wider public want to hear. I wonder if an honest psychologist is employable in this country?
I wonder how well SIN understand this? Very controversially they recruited Ray Wyre, who promoted himself as “the national expert on paedophilia”. At the time, Wyre had a background as a probation officer but with no directly relevant qualifications and no peer-reviewed publications to his name. He became the adviser to LFF and SIN. He was not without controversy. As a probation officer he had booked his meetings with sex offenders in groups. He did not ask either higher authority or the offenders themselves for permission to do this. He used this as a stepping stone to introduce sex offenders’ programmes imported from North America devised by Bill Marshall. These programmes are highly abusive mainly because they attempt to re-programme the mind to suit the state, as in the novel A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess (later film version directed by Stanley Kubrick). Inspired by Marshall, Wyre wrote a residential programme lasting nine months which was delivered by LFF/SIN. More seriously, Wyre was pre-occupied by MAPs who committed murder and was seeking to develop an hypothesis linking minor attraction and murder.
Initially, in 1992, they tried to open the Gracewell Clinic in Birmingham. Locally, this caused outrage because as a “progressive step” Wyre wanted to open the clinic next door to a children’s hospital. Even Lucy Faithfull had her doubts. Thankfully, the ghastly idea was shelved but in 1996 the Wolvercote Clinic opened in Epsom, Surrey. This clinic survived for six years and was confronted by local people waving placards saying what they would like to do to the clients and others like them. SIN/LFF were very dismissive of local concerns. They are also similarly dismissive whenever MAPs complain about the hatred and stigma they experience on a daily basis even though they have often witnessed this and know that people have been murdered because it was perceived that they were minor attracted. Their excuse is that whenever a “newspaper” screams extreme hatred about an “evil monster” it is not aimed at say, Adam Powell, but the reality of the media is that they promote hatred against all MAPs. There is an absurdity within British culture. On the one hand British people hold the media in very low regard indeed but then quote media prejudices as being absolute truth.
SIN believe that sex offending is a “learned behaviour” that can be “unlearned”. Such a statement is absurd because all behaviour is learned and no behaviour can be unlearned. For example, to be able to play the piano one first needs to learn how to play the piano and once learned the skill is not forgotten but may benefit from occasional practice. SIN make a practice of making sweeping statements that on examination make no sense such as “minor attraction cannot possibly exist because reciprocity in a relationship is important to me and a child can give nothing back”
When asked to explain their thinking, they attribute sex offending to exposure to violence. So a rapist, for example, probably will have greater exposure to violence than the general public. They then, very dishonestly categorise all sex offenders with the rapist and create an impression that all sex offenders are motivated by violence, which is clearly not the truth, whereas if they looked at sub-categories individually they would get different results.
It is like making the general observation that poverty is the most frequent cause of financial dishonesty and then claiming that a banker who commits fraud is motivated by poverty. They like asserting that sex offending is not a mental illness and indeed it is not, but minor attraction is listed in DSM-5 as being a mental disorder (albeit not automatically so). This undermines SIN in two ways. First it shows that mental health professionals accept that minor attraction exists (even if the UK government refuses to accept this) and secondly SIN is seriously under-qualified to deal with these matters. When shown this, they become dismissive, seeing the work of psychiatrists more talented than themselves as a work of “American indulgence”.
Their tactic is to manipulate their clients into the belief that the client’s parents and others of significance are to blame for the client’s sex offending. Their reason for this is to preserve their own belief that if a person feels motivated towards adult-child sexual behaviour (even if it is only holding hands) there must be something very badly wrong with that person. Clearly “counselling” does not cause minor attraction to go away and the “therapist” systematically torments the client for admitting that they have these feelings. Their goal is to instil guilt so that the client develops a social phobia to the extent that they cannot travel on buses or trains or go to shops where children are present. According to SIN, this phobia is “empowerment”. According to them, anyone who experiences sexual feelings towards children does so by choice, because the client is not obliged to be wherever the child is. They also become personally abusive at this point, asserting that people choose to be minor attracted because they are low status among their “peer group” (although they cannot define what a peer group is) and then choose to be friendly with children (which then becomes sexualised) because this is “safer for them than seeking to develop relationships with adults”. SIN think that they have an educative role in “teaching” people to have “rewarding relationships” with adults. They seem to imagine that relationships are about “social skills” rather than falling in love, and they seem to think they can teach “social skills” even though they themselves are frequently rude.
SIN UK also view singles as people who are not fully fledged adults. They think that single MAPs should have adult partners; they fail to think through issues such as how the adult partner feels about minor attraction or whether the relationship gives access to children within the partner’s family. For them, the most important thing in life is about “fitting in” suggesting they would persecute gays if this was necessary to “fit in”.
As they do not believe minor attraction exists, they cannot accept either that people can have paedophilic feelings but not act on them. They completely misunderstand homosexuality too. I remember a member of staff complaining to me that she could not understand what I was talking about when mentioning the combination of gay and celibate. In their imagination, anyone who is gay is homosexually active; so a child cannot be gay because they are “too young for that”. Due to their lack of separation between sexual attraction and sexual activity, they cannot accept that it is possible for a minor attracted person to live a responsible life as an MAP. They think MAPs must erase these emotions. SIN UK admitted that they have had complaints from clients alleging aggravation of existing mental health disorders (but still think there is a higher point of principle at stake). They also have difficulty understanding why a man sexually attracted to boys would describe himself as gay and minor attracted. For them being gay is adult-to-adult only. They don’t bother reading DSM, for example, which explains that homosexuality is sexual attraction between persons of the same sex and that age does not come into it.
Their rejection of minor attraction is partly because of perceived power difference; but power difference exists in all relationships, so objecting to power difference in relationships is opposition to all relationships. SIN become dismissive when this is explained to them and their response is to defend their own marriages as having equality of power. Even if this were true, it might not remain so. What if one partner happened to be in a car crash, was unable to work again and was left dependant on their spouse for care? Such questions to SIN are dismissed as “unhelpful”. They do not seem to understand that power differences are not a problem when people sincerely love each other.
I have spoken a lot about SIN UK but I think that SIN NL is a good deal better than this. They do for example, accept that some people through no choice or fault of their own or anybody else’s are minor attracted and need to live responsible lives as MAPs and navigate a lot of stigma and ignorance. I remember a staff member of SIN UK becoming angry when I pointed this out and they become personally insulting.
Much of what they say is prefixed with “society says”. They get quite agitated when one points out that until a few years ago society hated gays for being gay and that one should not jump onto a bandwagon just because it has majority support. Their answer is that they don’t equate the two things, but then neither do I. They simply refuse to accept that if they repeat discredited behaviourist techniques that have failed with gays they will fail again, causing untold misery.
For all the controversy, SIN NL appears to be a much more humane organisation than its British equivalent. They work closely with Dr Frans Gieles and with JORis, a Dutch MAP group; JON is its counterpart in a different part of the country. They have shared ideas and materials. I do believe, however, that the only reason MAPs are treated with even a modicum of respect in the Netherlands is thanks to the pioneering work of Edward Brongersma and Frits Bernard. Until recently, MAPs had more political power in the NL than in the UK. Here lies the issue, in my opinion. Minor attraction is a political problem in need of a political solution and unfortunately, I do not think that things will get any better for MAPs without organising politically.
[…] His logical approach is consistent with his work as a published author of formal philosophy. With Adam Powell, he was a joint founder of the unfortunately ill-fated Forum for Understanding Minor Attraction […]
dear BJ! I’m trying, without just jumping straight on the old reductercycle, to nevertheless get at the ‘nub’ of your enquiry … for what would we ever do without the nub? Reeling out there on the Nullabor in the night, even as we squeak?
What I’m getting as I read is that what seems to matter to you above all here is who, or how any conceivable ‘psycho-sexual subject’ before us, finally gets to wear the ‘paedophile’ crown? That our concern before anything else should be who is awarded, and at what point, the diagnostic blessing of ‘paedophilia,’ or designated as living specimen of the class ‘paedophile’? The idea seems to be that it’s there in the very term that greater knowledge of human relations may be found, and not, on the contrary, neatly eclipsed by classification?
Is this what we want? An identity like all those other craven identities, whose only mission can be to show how they are ultimately victims of the whiteout-western centre, but now properly markxed forevermore by the p-stain?
I ask because in the midst of what seems to be an honest desire to confront the question of whence desire, you phrase questions such as “If, as one ages, one continues to desire people younger than oneself, being in a process of maturation which creates one as a paedophile, surely it is at that stage that imagination plays the largest part? This is to suggest that one’s desire creates the imaginings which then become the foundation of further desire.”
Isn’t the bigger, more important question, as with getting beyond the narrow focus on individual ‘language acquisition’, how we became creatures capable of language and/or desire in the first place… ? For is not desire a thing structurally distinguished at all points from instinctual appetite? Obviously desire depends on visceral appetite, but can it ever be the same thing? And is not the very concept of desire quite inseparable from the totality of human institutions which have always existed to generate it, to control it, or to repress it?
The absolute root of desire must lie in what we GAkins call an ‘act of aborted appropriation’. And that the instinctual act(ion) has been aborted can only be registered within the hungry group by means of what we call the originary sign. Whereupon we commence, for the very first time in our…our otherwise animal experience, to * imagine * what it would be like to appropriate this (doubtlessly juicy) object. That object is now situated at the centre of what has become the scene-of-representation, mediating all who would henceforth approach it according to the rightness, or wrongness, of their attempts at imitating the correct gesture, or iow their reproduction of the initial, conflict-deferring sign.
Apologies for ignoring the subject of this post, but I need to comment on something that Turps said below. So…
Turps and desire
I don’t want to talk about sexual orientation, rather, I want to take up the notion of desire as dependent on imagination.
It seems obvious that behaviour follows desire, but is it equally clear that this says something about sexual orientation? Or, is it clear that desire follows imagination?
What I mean is something like this: Being attracted to a particular age group, or to male or female bodies of any age, seems distinct from desire and imagination in the sense that it is one’s orientation which leads to desire for a particular person who fulfils the criteria of the orientation.
Now, I have no doubt that you will object to that, so, permit me to take another approach—
Presumably, as one grows, one finds oneself attracted to particular genders and ages, this attraction constituting the either the beginning of desire or desire itself. If, as one ages, one continues to desire people younger than oneself, being in a process of maturation which creates one as a paedophile, surely it is at that stage that imagination plays the largest part? This is to suggest that one’s desire creates the imaginings which then become the foundation of further desire.
Mind you, I don’t think it matters whether the chicken, the egg, or the omelette came first; I am merely making a conceptual proposition, because concepts are such fun to play with.
A more interesting and all but practical point concerning imagination arises in respect of imagination and non-paedophilic adult attraction to children. Imagine this:
An adult person who has never experienced sexual desire for a child, suddenly finds one very attractive, and desires to see, but not touch, that child, until beginning to have daydreams about the child in which there is increasingly intimate physical contact, ending with the adult, whilst masturbating, engaging in sexually fantasies about the child, even though their primary sexual object remains another adult.
Is this sufficient for them to be called a paedophile, or is it merely necessary?
We know, from various research which I cannot be bothered referencing, that many non-paedophilic adults do in fact fantasise about sexual contact with children; we also know that many non-paedophilic adult men have what is called sexual reactions to children (increase in penile diameter and/or blood flow) when “tested”; lastly, as Kincaid discussed in detail, we also know that adults get off (enjoy) watching sexy young children in just about any old movie.
Just how do we consider these in respect of paedophilia?
If imagination comes before desire, and desire comes before sexual orientation, then merely finding a child attractive may be sufficient for a “diagnosis” of paedophilia, but this is a nonsense. Imagination, therefore, cannot have the prime place in desire and/or orientation, unless we wish to proclaim that we are, indeed, polymorphously sexual in every possible aspect.
Mayhap and maybe.
Tom/everyone
I’ve heard that a lot of sex offenders have been genuinely harmed as a result of sexual offences being committed against them and I am curious to know how and why there is such a huge correlation and if anyone knows how and where i can find the figures on this and would it be a good idea to see if i could find out by asking around a university or something like that.
>I’ve heard that a lot of sex offenders have been genuinely harmed as a result of sexual offences being committed against them
Are you sure this is really what you mean? Do you actually mean sex offenders (rather than children) were harmed? Also, I would think there is little evidence of sex offenders being subjected to “sexual offences” specifically, though no doubt many are assaulted non-sexually.
As for children, of course they are harmed by sexual offences when they are coercive or violent. No one denies this.
>As for children, of course they are harmed by sexual offences when they are coercive or violent. No one denies this.
Children are sex offenders and can be capable of committing sexual offences ie rape buggery ect and just like adults something similar could have happend to them. I am not saying any 1 here denies this tbh i wud rather ask here than any wer else.
>Are you sure this is really what you mean? Do you actually mean sex offenders (rather than children) were harmed?
Sex offenders who have had negative experiences of sex play are also csa survivors and should be treated as such and its a darn right scandle that they don’t get the same red carpet treatment of other survivors and wen i mean sex offenders i mean any 1 regardless of age and was wondering if u or any 1 else knows about the victim turn perp scenario
if there has been any research or who is worth asking about this.
> the victim turn perp scenario
What you are voicing here, Daniel, is a common misunderstanding. People tend to repeat things that they enjoy, not things they dislike, or situations in which they have been made a victim.
Someone might “survive” a car crash or a shipwreck. Do they want to repeat the experience? Probably not! It’s the same with survivors of rape or coerced sexual assault (true abuse, if you will). They do not want to repeat it.
I think that Daniel talks about the abused-abuser theory: that many sexual abusers (or sexual offenders, or paedophiles, depending on the variant) have been sexually abused in their childhood.
The main problem with this theory is that little girls experience many more sexual approaches or sexual assaults than little boys, but sexual offenders are mostly men, not women. Also, the sexual abuse of boys that leads to trauma and offending is usually not thought as a contact with a woman, but with a man.
To me this theory is an avatar of the “homosexual recruitment” theory, that little boys are born heterosexual (although innocent), so if they become homosexual, it is because of a homosexual seduction in their youth.
Well, if the homosexual recruitment theory doesn’t explain it, than clearly those homosexuals were created, in one way or another, by drinking too much of that water that made the friggin’ frogs gay!
Jokes aside, perhaps it’s theories like this that creates the greater mythology of horror around, not just child abuse, but specifically sexual abuse. The way I see it, It’s not thought of as just another form of abuse, but one that encompasses all other types of abuses all on its own. Simply put, child sex abuse is greater than the sum of all the other kinds of abuse. There is no way in which one can be sexually abused in isolation; said abuse must necessarily include physical, and emotional trauma, according to mainstream belief. Even if the effects of trauma aren’t immediate, or treated as such by the victim, that of course is only because said victim is ignorant, are just merely waiting to experience the true horror of their abuse.
Maybe it wasn’t painful for them, maybe they haven’t become emotional wrecks, and maybe they don’t become attracted to members of their own sex because of their activities with their perpetrator. But if that victim doesn’t realize that it was a horrible experience after all they will find themselves wanting to do all that to another child, when they themselves grow up. As it were, they have been infected with the pedo/homosexual virus and are now irresistibly compelled to spread it to everyone else. Indeed, mainstream culture treats this whole thing as a werewolf/vampire sort of plague that needs to be purged with extreme prejudice. Those who were abused will inevitably abuse others, if not facilitate that abuse on others. And so a boogeyman has been made to justify all sorts of paranoia, zealous rage, and oppressive (protective) measures. They don’t have to reason with it; one cannot reason with evil, it must be fought with no quarter given.
>mainstream culture treats this whole thing as a werewolf/vampire sort of plague
Indeed so. It is sometimes explicitly called “the vampire theory”.
it is possible to be touched up as a child and not be traumatised for life, wen it comes to touch yes if 1 is not attracted to that person then yes it is uncomfortable but its nothing like the hocus pocus that the media is making it out to be.
> if 1 is not attracted to that person then yes it is uncomfortable but its nothing like the hocus pocus that the media is making it out to be.
Richard Dawkin’s testimony comes to mind. It was uncomfortable for all, yes, but certainly not traumatizing. In fact, that even sounded like an experience that brought him and his own friends together, since they also were fondled by that same professor. They all laughed about it with each other, and also were laughing at the pervy professor as they were bonding. But even when he tried to be factual, keeping things in perspective no one could settle with Richard Dawkin’s sharing his experience. He failed to make it out so that their molestation is the worst thing that will ever happen to them.
Because if he thinks that this wasn’t so bad for him, what about his friends? Nevermind that he spoke with them all about it, that doesn’t count! What about other victims of actual rape and molestation? How can he be so heartless as to dismiss them all by sharing his own personal testimony? If he says that it wasn’t so bad for himself, than he’s also saying that it wasn’t so bad for them either! These are the sorts of questions, and comments I’ve seen in articles featuring Richard Dawkin’s story. It’s frankly a chicken and egg situation: Is the media influencing it’s audience to make this out to be all so terrible, or is the media merely giving their audience what they want?
>How can he be so heartless as to dismiss them all by sharing his own personal testimony? If he says that it wasn’t so bad for himself, than he’s also saying that it wasn’t so bad for them either!
I have read a lot of Dawkins. He is often accused of things that turn out not to be true. I have seen no evidence that he is heartless or that he sees coerced sexual assault as harmless.
Christian
yes chris u r right I am referring to wat u have sed down below and the problem for these ppl is that they don’t get the opportunity meet other victims of sexual assaults in the same way as other victims of offences that happend to them that they didn’t approve of , and as for victims who have commited offences, these particular victims don’t get any help wat so ever and we need services or some wer for these ppl to find other ppl who have had similar experience lets not for get that the offences that a lot of these victims have commited, well lets just say that the punishment does’t always fit the crime NOT BY A LONG CHALK.
>think that Daniel talks about the abused-abuser theory:
A new, very interesting blogpost by Pro-Pedo Front, explaining why he thinks that pro-contact MAPs and their allies should rather name themselves “pro-consent”:
https://propedofront.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/the-change-from-pro-contact-to-pro-consent/
What do you think about this renaming idea?
>What do you think about this renaming idea?
Much better than pro-contact, but that was never a term put forward by heretics.
Tom, this is off topic, but I think it is important enough, as I have never heard about such an objection.
I don’t know if you are on speaking terms with James Cantor, but both of you are at least “on touch” on SexNet. I simply wonder if his infamous study concerning left-handedness, low IQ and so on involves female pedophiles as well? I mean: since the rate of left-handed men and women in the population is approximately the same, then how can it be that there are so few female pedophiles compared to men, if there is a link between pedophilia and left-handedness? (If you and Cantor are not on speaking terms, you can still raise the question on SexNet as such or elsewhere).
>I simply wonder if his infamous study concerning left-handedness, low IQ and so on involves female pedophiles as well?
I am pretty sure it does not. JC and his Toronto colleagues have generally done their research on male offenders. To the best of my memory there has also been at least one study that casts significant doubt on his IQ findings. Incidentally, adult-oriented gay men have an elevated rate of left-handedness but I don’t think it has never been suggested (not in a modern scientific study at least) that they are of lower IQ than straight men.
>I mean: since the rate of left-handed men and women in the population is approximately the same, then how can it be that there are so few female pedophiles compared to men, if there is a link between pedophilia and left-handedness?
Good question. I think there are actually more left-handers in the male population. There has been quite a lot of research showing that males experience developmental abnormalities at a greater rate than females. There is a clear reason for this in terms of pre-natal development. Every foetus starts its development on a trajectory that would take it towards becoming a female. In order to change from this “default setting” to make a male baby, extra processes must take place, and these extra processes introduce the possibility of errors creeping in. It’s to do with hormonal masculinisation of the foetus.
This is also thought to be the reason why males suffer higher rates of certain mental conditions than females, such as autism and schizophrenia.
Tom/Sugar boy
>This is also thought to be the reason why males suffer higher rates of certain mental conditions than females, such as autism and schizophrenia.
What is being sed here sound a bit like how the planet evolved.
I love these comments, everything from evolutionary theory to nattering nabobs of nosexualism to accented birds. (“Tweet tweet, y’all”). In the early Seventies I was briefly acquainted with a woman who distributed pamphlets insisting on “Sex before eight or else it’s too late”; she disappeared just as The Gays began marching for acceptance. We haven’t come a single step, it seems, since then and have likely pressed the wrong button in the lift and are now stuck in the second lower level. Resigned to “Not in my lifetime,” I’ll continue reading but without much hope that any of us on any end of whatever spectrum can actually effect change.
But thanks to all for trying.
> was briefly acquainted with a woman who distributed pamphlets insisting on “Sex before eight or else it’s too late”
Ah, yes. guess you mean Valida Davila, distrinuting pamphlets based on the radical philosophy of Rene Guyon.
Here one can find the electronic versions of some of the issues of the “Nusletter” – the publication of the Childhood Sensuality Circle, an organisation where Valida Davila was a leader, as well as some general info about both her and the organisation:
https://seksualpolitikk.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/csc-nusletter/
Good to see these publications online. What a great blast from the past! Thanks, Explorer!
It was a very pleasant surprise to me to find them on the Web, indeed!
Maybe you could put that page in your blogroll…
And she only chose “eight” because she couldn’t find a rhyme for “eleven”. The woman was nutso but I have to say that she gave me a lot of confidence at a time when I needed some reassurance that “I was not alone”
>… she only chose “eight” because she couldn’t find a rhyme for “eleven”.
Sex is heaven if you start before eleven!
OK, so this doesn’t fully capture what Valida was saying, which was more like “Sex can be heaven but only if you start before eleven”, meaning that we tend to become neurotic about sex if we have no practice in intimate relations early in life.
Eight was fine, I’d say. That full captured the idea of a “best before” date.
I was just reading about Shirley Temple when I stumbled (as you do)! across this article. He seems to imply that just because it’s almost impossible to form a modern day PIE if you like, Or speak openly in public in support of paedophilia, That, to him, seems to validate his argument — Which is nothing more than bandwagon fallacy!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/paedophilia-generation-mail-nccl
“this sickness is still here, 40 years later!” Yo, this “sickness” is still here 5,000 years later! Maybe it ain’t a sickness after all!
I give up.
Yes, BJ Freedman, I despair too! I came across a site just the other day that purports to “Stamp out Paedophilia!” and is generally vile and ignorant.
But at least they can SPELL paedophilia — even if it is the wrong word they’re using…
Sorry, Tom. I know I do go on! Love, Mike.
>Sorry, Tom. I know I do go on!
No problem, Mike, always nice to hear from you!
Tom, lovely to hear from you, too!
Best possible wishes, Mike.
There is no argument in it, is there? As I’m hardly the first to point out, it seems this is one of those areas in which people can get away with fact-free, reason-free crap.
What happened to the Brazilian Dam that was said to even stop “child abuse”.
was it to flood and destroy everything in its path?
>What happened to the Brazilian Dam that was said to even stop “child abuse”
It’s still there, as far as I know, and still miraculously stopping child abuse (or not) without bursting as yet. After the recent dam burst news, though, one never knows what will happen next.
Debauch clearly has an excellent memory. For those who have no idea what he or I are on about, here is the relevant part of my post five years ago, written in Brazil. Writing about the great Itaipu Dam, I said:
It is even – wait for it – committed to ending the sexual abuse of children! A dam, would you believe, an immense pile of concrete and rocks, has taken upon itself to protect the little ones!
Quite how the dam proposes to achieve this aim was never spelt out but I suppose it could imitate the god of the Israelites, unleashing a tsunami down that mighty slipway to flood the cities of the plain beneath, drowning all the abusers (and all the “protected” children!), sealing their fate like that of the sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah!
I am reliably informed by a long-time American expat here who has excellent Portuguese that the Brazilian media these days are just as crazily dominated by anti-CSA propaganda as in the Anglophone world. Arguably it is even worse. I doubt, for instance, that a government information film in Britain about, say, a new nuclear power programme would mention CSA. Neither do we see anti-CSA posters in public squares, as I have here in Brazil.
SEE: “A dam smart way to divert attention”:
https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/a-dam-smart-way-to-divert-attention/
Think about it, the whole entire reason that pedophilia is wrong or considered wrong is not because children look like children, it’s not because adults who could pass for a kid have a body type that is wrong and should not be normalized. It is because, aside from the common sense of society, the studies done on this, show that kids are disturbed by sex. For a myriad of reasons, kids aren’t psychologically ready yet.
i.e. the pedo stuff is wrong because suffering. Pedophiles acting on their desires is bad because suffering is bad. And the suffering of children is extra bad because most of us out there particularly want to protect kids and not see them suffer.
Actually, no, they do not.
Studies that appear to show otherwise invariably put the blame on sex when the cause of psychological trauma to children can far more reasonably be attributed to other factors, including neglect, physical violence, verbal harshness and coldness (just lack of love, really), and chaotic, dysfunctional family backgrounds.
The classic study demonstrating this point is the famous (but not famous enough outside the academic world) Rind et al. meta-analysis of 1998. See below.
Rind, B., Bauserman, R., & Tromovitch, P. (1998). A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 22–53.
Another scientific study may be of relevance here. People “out there”, who are always able to wag their fingers at the desires of pedophiles but are conveniently silent about (or at best explain away) kid’s desires, apparently don’t know that pedophiles possess a nurturing instinct to a greater extent than average people (see: Decoding Pedophilia: Increased Anterior Insula Response to Infant Animal Pictures, Front. Hum. Neurosci, 23 January 2018, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00645). Therefore, since nurturing and protection go hand in hand, if “sgy” is really concerned about kids’ suffering, it would be more appropriated to scold the people “out there” rather than the pedophiles.
“This study aimed to evaluate whether there are hints of an aberrant nurturing processing in pedophilic men.”
That study had me in tears of laughter. There’s something cathartic about scientific validation of a healthy truth I’ve known in my gut for decades and which (still today) gets spun in the direction of the pathological.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IASlzm9fjdQ
I enjoyed your podcast. I hope it will go on to flourish.
Can I make a couple of suggestions?
I think the podcast could benefit from more structure. Maybe each podcast should focus on a topic (stigma, CL literature, activism…) to which you devote half (or however much) of your time, each participant preparing a contribution… then the rest of the podcast can be more general and wide-ranging.
I also think it would broaden things out if you had (at least one) GL on.
I think they already have one GL in that podcast, I think he was referred to as “Merr”.
Thanks – I missed that… I’ll try to give it second listen some time soon.
You have mentioned to me in the past, Adam, how, after lengthy interaction with some of these mental health professionals, they would eventually start to see things from your point of view. I think others here might be interested in hearing about that.
I’ve had some correspondence with Juliet Grayson of StopSo and UK, though probably not as much interaction as Adam. To be honest, though, I haven’t heard anything from her suggesting a belief that pedophilia doesn’t exist or that child attraction is a matter of choice. I’m hopeful that Adam can provide some citations. Here is a link to an on-line publication that StopSo put together. I found the article by Sarah Goode (who works with StopSo) to be very good. Ethan and I also made a contribution on behalf of virped.
https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/news/special-feature-stopso-tackling-sexual-abuse-21st-century/
This is an interesting article for me to read. The key issue here is about being honest. In the Netherlands Stop It Now is more or less the same as in the UK, because here they also have the opinion of what is allowed (by the public and/or the state). Because when you here argument that not all sex between minors and adults is harmful, then this discussion is cut off, it is not allowed in any way possible. And people that go to Stop It Now in The Netherlands are being told not to have any contact with people like me or Ad van den Berg et cetera. I have heard this from several people that were in contact with Stop It Now. A major tactic is to isolate them from the ‘radical’ ideas from people like me.
You can choose to be ‘tactical’ and work together with Stop It Now (one small step at the time, hopefully making a little progress in doing so) or you can stay honest to your own opinions and to facts from scientific papers and some people speaking out about such relationships. In the latter case you just can not work with Stop It Now, because you are their ‘enemy’, that places wrong ideas into people’s minds…
We deserve better.
Thanks Marthijn, it’s good to have an informed view from the Netherlands on this topic.
I guess we need to keep things in perspective. SIN NL may be a bit more enlightened than SIN UK, but it is still in the dark ages as far as the moral standing of adult/child sex is concerned. But then if it was sounder on that, it would surely have to change its name. Maybe ‘Stop it now, but wait until social mores and legal changes allow you to carry on!’ might be more reasonable, if a bit of a mouthful,
>Maybe ‘Stop it now, but wait until social mores and legal changes allow you to carry on!’ might be more reasonable, if a bit of a mouthful,
“Stop it for now”? 🙂
Just one extra word. Brilliant!
🙂
stephan6000
ive never been to stopso but do u really think that ppl like this will have to change their approach as long as those with nothing to loose continue to go against the grain cos tbh i dont know how much longer we can be ignored wat is your estimate?
>Maybe ‘Stop it now, but wait until social mores and legal changes allow you to carry on!’ might be more reasonable, if a bit of a mouthful,
I think they can ignore us for as long as they want, unfortunately, Daniel. We are very easy to marginalise. I think Tom makes a good point in his first book when he says that ‘paedophile liberation’ is unlikely to happen by focusing on our problems alone. If instead there were to be an increased understanding of youth rights, including rights of young people to effective sex education, which would include a recognition of the need to ‘try sex out’ as soon as the child feels ready for that, it would be an important step forward. Of course, the recognition of the right to choose a friendly adult as a sexual partner (which would imply full social acceptance of paedophiles) is a step beyond that, but at least it would be a bit closer under those circumstances. So whatever we can do for youth and child rights is generally worth doing.
stephen6000
I agree that we shouldn’t keep focusing on our own issues and the youth also have the same issues and i know social attitudes wer bad in wen i was in my teens so i can only imagine what its like living with paedosexuality in this day and age as a teen or even a pre teen especially with having the knowledge of wat the jo public including their own school friends wud do to them if they ever found out wat their true sexual orientation is.
>Of course, the recognition of the right to choose a friendly adult as a sexual partner (which would imply full social acceptance of paedophiles) is a step beyond that, but at least it would be a bit closer under those circumstances. So whatever we can do for youth and child rights is generally worth doing.
I feel there’s a bit of self-flattery/justification whenever people say something is learned, or a conscious choice. Like they think then that one has to be that dominant, dictatorial, or justify social, and intellectual isolation in order to protect one from homosexuality, or whatever else they’re scared of. And as parents, social engineers, moral guardians, they feel powerful enough, or have the responsibility to set up such bubbles and mold people into whatever shape and form they want. Outside of the heterosexual, masculine/feminine, dominant/submissive paradigm, nobody could possibly be born with anything. Nature, as it were, needs help in being natural. So they employ artificial means to twist and alter nature to make it more natural. And we’re not talking about nature being artificially twisted first, and then having to be detangled next, but nature growing by itself has to be untwisted from its own natural growth.
But on that, here’s a worrying, and maybe depressing thought:
Wouldn’t it be sadly hilarious if pedophiles were holding the key to “curing” orientations this whole time? Since we’re held in such low regard they’ll feel at better liberty for trial-and-error experiments to unlock that elusive secret to changing one’s sexual orientation. But once that secret to conversion therapy is discovered, and pedophiles can finally be cured, why not gays or lesbians as well? They no longer have that pesky excuse of being “born” that way, that they never “chose” their attractions, with this new found conversion therapy available. Their refusal to submit to that treatment is just further proof of their conscientious choice to engage in such life-styles.
But if one’s sexual orientation can be changed, in fact, if pedos, gays, and lesbians, can be altered to being straight, why can’t straights themselves be “tweaked” in their own sexuality? Why not stop it all together, if the therapists were to be so inclined? And if even now that method of altering sexual orientations is available, why not change other aspects of one’s character? The way they think, how they act, their motivations and concerns, the way one votes, all of that can be changed now! We no longer needed any persuasion, or reason, or debates. We no longer have to think of the best way of socializing, or utilizing every individual in the best way that only they themselves can offer to everyone else. Just run them through this new and improved conversion therapy.
This will be the dream come true of the dreaded social engineers, for whoever is the first to be elected when this new conversion therapy is made available: People from all sorts of beliefs, and motivations can be altered as clay at their hands. And after all that’s done, preventative measures will surely be made to keep anyone from tempering with all this, later. No future elections going to turn all this around, because people will no longer feel the need to undo the mass conversion that the previous generation was subject to.
Aaaand there goes our democracies, republics, respect for individual dignity, and free intellectual inquiry. Those systems, and concerns were always messy, and inefficient, anyway.
Sorry for the crackpot rant there…
Sounds like you’ve got the outline for a dystopian novel there, podigaljohn!
Yes, and I’ll call it “1984”!
Oh, wait… That’s taken.
Why not 2091? After all 1984 was written in 1948 with the author simply reversing the 4 and the 8.
Well, maybe. Except on publication it’ll probably be dismissed as a wankery, pedo-centric, social justice knock-off of the better written, Orwellian original.
Instead of a political horror story, it could be a satirical one. Even if pedophilia was never the originator of sexual deviancy (Like it’s some pedosexual Morgoth to the homosexual Sauron), as the usual narrative goes, it’s sure to be the ultimate unmaker of it all.
My dystopian political satire is already writing itself!
“Stetson University psychologist Chris Ferguson notes that the [APA] guidelines’ emphasis on trying to get traditionally-masculine men to become something other than what they are is reminiscent of the “conversion” therapies of decades past, which sought to convert homosexual men into heterosexual men.”
https://ifstudies.org/blog/psychology-as-indoctrination-girls-rule-boys-drool
This article is quite an education. I would think about half the membership of the Sexnet forum I belong to is comprised of American psychologists, but I am pretty sure that hardly any of them would subscribe to the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines referred to here, namely the “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men”.
This could be a generational thing. The Sexnet psychologists are by and large quite senior in the profession, hence older. The article itself tells us:
>Among American psychologists 61 to 70 years of age, the male/female ratio is almost precisely 50/50. Among American psychologists 31 to 35 years of age, women now outnumber men by more than 8 to 1, according to the APA’s own data.
I would think this huge shift towards a largely female profession in the younger age groups must have influenced the (new) guidelines massively.
APA “male guidelines” are ugly indeed, yet the article you posted is also quite bad: it is a reiteration of the authoritarian mythology of “sheep-sheepdogs-wolves”, that is quite deceptive: it always forget to mentions “shepherds” – the ruling elite, who own and command both “sheep” and “sheepdogs” – with the latter more properly called “shepherds’ dogs”, since these are “shepherds”, not “sheep”, whom they truly serve. And “shepherds”, being owners, are free to treat their sheep and their dogs any way they want – including killing “sheep” for their meat – with the support of “shepherds’ dogs”, who will forcibly direct the herd to the slaughterhouse at the “shepherds'” orders.
And how would this theory designate somebody who attacks “shepherds” and their faithful “dogs”, driven by desire to liberate the “sheep”? Definitely not a “wolf”, since wolves prey on “sheep”, not on “dogs” and ‘shepherds”. There is simply no name for such people in the authoritarian theory. This is predictable, since people are neither “sheep” nor “dogs” nor “wolves”. Each one of them is one’s own only true shepherd, leading his herd of one – and ready to interact and coexist with other free self-shepherds in the equal and voluntary way.
P.S. In the end, I recommend everyone here to read the brilliant article by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, “‘Anarchism and Crime”. It explains how the free society may deal with the few violent individuals within itself:
http://www.rawillumination.net/2013/08/anarchism-and-crime-by-wilson-and-shea.html
From Explorer’s linked article:
>Most anarchists believe that criminals should not be caged under any circumstances, due to the overwhelming evidence that every prisoner comes out of a cage worse than he goes into it.
While I agree that prison is grossly overused as a punishment and that abolishing prisons altogether might be a good idea if (but it’s a big if) suitable alternative means could be found for communities to express their displeasure, when to do so is justified, as an ex-prisoner myself I am not sure I can agree there is “overwhelming evidence that every prisoner comes out of a cage worse than he goes into it”.
Who is measuring that? And how? Did Nelson Mandela emerge from prison a worse man than he went in? Or Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi?
Prisoners might come out blinking, battered and perhaps somewhat broken, like Oscar Wilde, who arguably behaved badly towards his wife after his release; but even in his case I am not sure we can be confident he was any worse than when he went in.
>APA “male guidelines” are ugly indeed…
Suppose that’s for the older generation of men who managed to escape the ADHD diagnosis net that younger boys were caught in, some years ago. Wasn’t there a string of years where boys were being over diagnosed for being ADHD, when really that’s just their masculine energy being in dire need to be expanded? Of course with the mainstream education system doesn’t want to adjust itself to make the most of these boys, and would rather urge their parents to drug them into compliance, and whatever, nevermind the consequences of it all.
I certainly would have been “diagnosed” with both ADHD and ODD, were I to live in modern America – I was both “hyperactive” and “defiant” in my childhood!
And I remain so to this day…
In light of that one boy who was suspended for chewing out a gun from his poptart, I have to wonder how I got away with what I did.
Back in elementary, anti-drug campaigns were the hot topic trend. So my art class was assigned to make posters saying no to drugs, etc. My posters, that I made year after year, were depictions of an army of stick figure men in battle with anthropomorphic beer cans, cigarettes, and syringes. They were blowing up the beer cans, using flamethrowers the cigarettes, and using axes and swords to hack at the needles.
If I were to do that today, I’d probably have gotten my parents in trouble (my family life was fine, they were no excuse for my violent, anti-drug, pictures). And then I would have been sent through heavy therapy, or something.
I do feel the need to say more. Whilst not bypassing for one second all the work of T’OC to date, this effort in particular would seem to have in it both the force and focus of a manifesto of sorts, the kind of thing you can almost load in your holster, at that frontier where “wild west” law enforcement and the ceaseless generation of reborn desire swing back and forth at some almost unspeakable crossroads. I’ll get out of here before I trip over that sign saying ‘plain english only spoken here’
> I’ll get out of here before I trip over that sign saying ‘plain english only spoken here’
Some of us here are fans of Foucault, whose writing wasn’t even plain French never mind plain English. Many important writers, from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein have expressed themselves obscurely. Complex, difficult, writing is welcome here when the writer feels it necessary in order to do justice to the complexity and subtlety of the issues.
However, plain writing will be better understood, which is a huge advantage. A more poetic, opaque style is best used sparingly, and can be very effective when confined to a single line or so that invites careful thought, and may seem paradoxical, such as (when the expression was first coined, at least) an aphorism such as “Ignorance is bliss”. Here the words are plain but I suppose when first uttered they would have prompted the response “Really? How so?, or “Nonsense!”; either way, a fertile discussion could have followed.
This effort is nothing short of magnificent. Concluding my consumption of every sentence of it, I stood and saluted the text. I mean, really, that is exactly what I did. There is not one word of it wasted, anywhere. May I donate my immense gratitude to its author – and also my resentment (if I may briefly employ a potent GA concept) to whatever centre it is that keeps holding us together to this day
Amen
I have no doubt that Adam Powell is correct in seeing SIN and LFF members as clueless and seriously lacking in nuanced thinking. He should himself however be careful when making a categorical pronouncement such as “Such a statement is absurd because all behaviour is learned and no behaviour can be unlearned.” In making such an unsupported claim he is not only committing the same kind of sin for which he is excoriating SIN but is also contradicting his own argument. One does not, for instance, “learn” an emotional or sexual orientation.
As for “no behaviour can be unlearned”, I know from personal experience and from those of others that a language learned at a relatively young age can be completely forgotten (i.e. unlearned) when the person becomes re-established in a new culture with a new language.
A good deal of behavior is indeed not learned but inherent in the organism. In human beings, the capacity for language (as opposed to any particular language) is inherent and not learned. Even people born with very limited intellectual abilities readily absorb, within their capacities, the syntax, pronunciation and albeit with limited vocabulary within their native language. The particular words may be learned but not the mimicry of the syntax and pronunciation of their peers.
Another example of behavior that is not learned but inherent in the child is the ability to walk. That complex behavior is there to begin with and not learned. That the very young child does not walk immediately upon birth as many other mammals can is because he lacks the muscle strength (not the inborn ability to walk).
Of course, because of our own experiences and that of those who share our orientations, we know that emotional and/or physical attractions are not learned behaviors. And as such, like our capacities to absorb languages or to walk, they cannot be “unlearned”. And to force “unlearning” on anyone is an abomination.
That SIN, LFF and those of that ilk lack the intellect to understand the whole and complex range of human behavior is bad enough. We should strive to not imitate their very limited analytical abilities.
I would immediately call into question whether the whole thrust of what is usually understood by the term “behaviour” and its associated ideation is the best we can come up with when dealing with an idea as comparatively obscure as ‘orientation’? There is nothing in my experience or attempts to ‘understand’ that experience which tells me I was ‘born this way’, ie with all my heat-seeking capacity (if you will) ultimately attuned to children. As my right hand was tailored to using a writing instrument or hammer. In a word, desire – which I am taking as the operative element in ‘orientation’ – does not require “behaviour” of any kind to exist, or to come to exist, at all. Above all, desire requires imagination.
Should we even be speaking of the kind of thing that is happening when a ‘newborn’ person begins to react, and act on the basis of each act’s significance as “behaviour”?
And I think that I did indeed “learn” what psychosexual ‘orientation’ I might be said to now possess. From the slow but sure estimation of what it is I value most in the world…
Stop me if I’m wrong Peter, but you also seem to be making an odd distinction at one point between learning and mimicking? How do these two part company I wonder? Or never come together in the first place?
“… it can only be evident that all Human Beings are sharing the same space at the same time and that each of you behave as you do based upon your individual desire, ability and intent.”
But isn’t a very large part of how we act motivated by what we believe to be the expectations not only of the other in whichever situation, but also by our huge anticipation of what we believe “society” is expecting of us as a whole?
yes, this gets complicated very, very fast
Concerning mimicry, It appears from studies of birds, for example, that groups from different regions but of the same specie exhibit distinct accents in their bird songs. To use a human example, I recall once hearing an American little girl speaking with a totally British accent picked up after only a short time living in Britain. She had not consciously decided to “learn” the local accent. I call that mimicry.
To use another example from a recent US TV report of parents being arrested by police where the parents were directed at gun point to put their hands up in the air. Viewers were shocked when a little girl who was with the arrested adults also put her hands up in the air. Contrary to initial interpretations, she had not been directed to do so by the police but simply mimicked the adults. There are good evolutionary reasons for this kind of automatic “unlearned” behavior.
I am afraid, Turpitude, that you seem to put too much faith in human agency. Much if not all of human behavior, even that for which we imagine to be in total control, is on automatic pilot. Disagree with me all you want, but giving a detailed explanation of how I have come to my views would require too much additional energy.
well Peter I cannot say otherwise – this is just sad, That your wish, above all it seems, would be to lump everything, from the concept of “behaviour” to very language ITSELF, into the same miserable basket, overlfowing as that basket doubtless is, with jolly good “evolutionary reasons”. Can we trust a man whose apparent guiding principle is that he expend no significant “energy” on that which we should all ‘pre-understand’ anyway, if we are to be not burdened with ‘excessive’ faith?
As always, I never expected to be speaking this way, but language would not even be language if it gave me no more than the means of securing where I think I was before I made these my latest signs…
Isn’t faith in “evolutionary reasons” the biggest, baddest-ass faith of all though? Does it not allow you to bet on ALL the horses, in the secure conviction that they are all bound to reach the finishing/reasoning-line at once?
>Isn’t faith in “evolutionary reasons” the biggest, baddest-ass faith of all though? Does it not allow you to bet on ALL the horses, in the secure conviction that they are all bound to reach the finishing/reasoning-line at once?
Would you elaborate on this, please? As someone with an interest in evolution and evolutionary psychology, I like to think I am guided by emerging evidence from evolutionary studies, such as evidence relating to the development of of sexual inclinations, our forms of social organisation and, oh, what else? Ah, yes, the origin of language.
There is a lot of competing theory, for sure, and the available evidence is only sketchy as yet , but where does faith come into it? Working hard to find out well researched facts seems to me the opposite of making grand claims based on leaps of faith.
As for the theory of evolution itself, it is now massively, overwhelmingly, supported by well researched facts.
I don’t quite follow your word constructions — not that my own are always that clear either.
To add to Tom’s response below, evolution is a fact. When Darwin presented his findings, he understood that fact but had no full understanding of its mechanism. Much of that extremely complex mechanism is still to be investigated.
Speaking of faith, perhaps you believe in “intelligent design”. To disabuse you or anyone of that mistaken notion would require lessons in thermodynamics, mathematics of probabilities (as in the famous example of a watch left out on a path) and biology. Not that I am an expert in the aforementioned fields, but the little (but considerably more than most) that I do know and that have formed my views on the human condition would indeed require exceedingly more time and energy to convey than I have available for this purpose.
Speaking strictly, biological evolution and intelligent design are fully mutually compatible – the first is an empirical fact, indeed as established as it can be; the latter is a proposed mechanism, that potentially may explain this fact.
The debate is not evolution vs. intelligent design, but rather Neo-Darwinist interpretation of evolution vs. Intelligent Design interpretation of evolution. Of course, there are also hardcore anti-evolutionist creationists who indeed reject that the evolution happened – but I’m not interested in them, since their cause is demonstrably weak, Yet the intelligent design proponents are not creationists; whether their views are true or false, scientific or non-scientific, their non-creationist nature should be acknowledged.
The main reason why intelligent design proponents are often conflated with creationists is the fact that many of them are reactionary (or at least conservative) religious people, usually Christians. Yet some of them are not – one can be an atheist and an intelligent design proponent. And if we evaluate the objective claim, we should evaluate it objectively – by examination of evidence, theory and method, not of the motives and inclinations of its proponents.
P.S. I am, personally, not a Neo-Darwinist, but neither a hardcore Intelligent Design proponent. Being a fringe walker who conduct the search outside the constrains of mainstream religion, mainstream philosophy and mainstream science, I prefer the heretical, radical immaterialist notions of living beings continuously manifesting themselves and the world to live in (literally), through the free volition, anticipating intuition and conscious awareness, in the more and more complex forms over the manifestation process – notions that, I want to add, are fully compatible with the evidence of evolution.
Dear Explorer,
While you debate ethics and philosophy, those who would cut our throats can’t even spell ‘ethics’ and they think that philosophy is a kind of daffodil!
M T-W.
Most haters indeed will recognize neither ethics nor philosophy, even they will kick them in the backside. 😉 Yet being among non-haters here, why shouldn’t I allow myself to be both philosophical and ethical? For example, I’m still thinking about my response to LSM’ Harrisean “flourishing”-centered ethics…
Very well-said. A political problem, yes. I like how he worded this, because it implies that change is possible. Thanks, Adam, for recognizing that.
I think it is very disturbing to see us (Childlovers) are thinking that using a degrading, legal term such as “Minor” to describe our lovers is suddenly acceptable. it seems that this abhorrent term which denotes “less than” is now being used more and more. I keep seeing it pop up as if it is okay.
We should all know that this is a legal term which was invented in order to create yet more division as a class of “Minor” humans deserving of less rights and “Major” humans who are deserving of full rights. As proponent of an egalitarian world; it can only be evident that all Human Beings are sharing the same space at the same time and that each of you behave as you do based upon your individual desire, ability and intent. I have to meet a single human who acts based upon their physical age, race, gender, I.Q., Tribe, body shape etc.
For the longest time I have been challenging any laws that are not based upon individual desire, ability and intent of individuals involved in a matter as opposed to creating blanket rules of set behavior based upon the category created by and then imposed upon by a government.
I will hope that more of you will cease and protest this disturbing trend.
‘MAP’ (or ‘minor attracted person’) seems to have caught on to a great extent and clearly many would not agree with your impression that the word ‘minor’ is degrading in this context. Those who do feel that way might prefer ‘youth attracted’, but ‘YAP’ is not such a good acronym!
The acronym “MAP” is horrible. “Minor” is negative and “Attracted” reduces to mere sex.
It’s even better pedophilia, because filia = love. Or pedoeros, eros = love